Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Slavery

By Marilyn M. Barnewall

News With Views

Aug 27, 2017

The first recorded sale of Irish slaves in 1612 was to a
settlement in South America.

The little white girl on the cover of an ACLU Tweet last
Thursday looked Irish… blonde and beautiful, carrying a toy in one hand and an
American flag in the other. That Tweet was quickly replaced by
another of Kermit the Frog and an apology and note of thanks to those who had
complained about the ACLU using the picture of a white child. The ACLU
explained that the complainers were right…. white supremacy is everywhere they
said and we all need to be reminded of that.

In the interest of letting readers know part of my history
that could “color” my views on race and slavery, I need to disclose some
personal information. My granddaughters are half black. One has an
undergraduate and a Masters Degree from Stanford, the other an undergraduate
degree from the University of Southern California (USC) and is a very
successful young woman (happily married) in New York City. Their parents
were not rich… they worked at what can only be called middle class occupations.

My granddaughters went to university on full scholarships
having to do with their grades, not their race or skin color. My
oldest granddaughter was #2 in her state’s PSAT scores. The younger was
offered a full scholarship to NYU as well as USC. She is a whiz in
mathematics.

I also have a daughter-in-law who is Korean… her last name
used to be Lee. I guess it’s a good thing she isn’t a sports announcer
who was scheduled to cover the UVA game on Saturday after the Charlottesville
tragedy.

Now let me continue with my story about Irish slavery.

King James the 1st ruled in England early in
the 17th century and the English had a problem: The Irish
people against whom Britain had been practicing genocide since the reign of
Elizabeth I (who took off the head of Mary, Queen of Scots) just wouldn’t give
up their “Irishness.” The English couldn’t kill all of us, though.

Genocide is defined as “intentional action to destroy a
people in whole or in part.”

According to Ancestry.com’s DNA program, I am 52 percent
Scot-Irish .My people were sold into slavery by the English; Africans were
mostly sold into slavery by their own people but both groups were largely sold
for the same reason: they disagreed with those who presided over their 16th and
17th century government swamps.

Swamps in power centers have been around forever. The
politicians in Washington, D.C.’s swamp have done a better job of using psych
games to hide their “swampness” than TPTB (the powers that be) of olden
days. But the objectives of modern human slave traffickers appear to have
similar objectives: Get rid of people who disagree with you.

We think of those called “human traffickers” as being
inhuman trash who sell young women or children of both genders and all races
into criminal sex rings. The women and children are slaves to those who
sell sexual services of children to pedophiles and sexual services of women to
those who buy sex rather than find it in meaningful relationships. If the
slaves do not provide the services for which payment is made, the women and
children are severely punished – or, they are killed. Nothing is more
deplorable than those who partake as either providers for or buyers of human
flesh. It is the inhumane – and non-human – behavior of sick people.

Queen Elizabeth and King James couldn’t kill all of the
Irish who were too committed to their status as citizens of Ireland. The
Irish and the Scots wanted nothing to do with the British (which made them a
huge political problem). So the King and Queen either killed my people or
sold them into slavery.

As News With Views Kelleigh Nelson pointed out in one
of the best articles I’ve read on the broad subject of slavery and the
South, from 1500 to 1870, close to 600,000 slaves were brought to America’s
shores. Of the 600,000 slaves sold to Americans, about 1/3 of them were
Irish. It is difficult to estimate how many blacks and how many Irish,
but there are some documented examples of what the numbers might be.

For example, at the beginning of one 12-year revolt by the
Irish known as the Confederation War, the Irish population was 1,466,000.
It fell to 616,000 by the end of the war. Over 550,000 Irishmen were
killed and a minimum of 300,000 men were sold as slaves, a majority were sold
in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts… on America’s Northeast coast.
Irish men were sold into slavery by the English and their servitude was for
life. Women and children were sold for a certain period of years after
which they were to be set free (if they survived).

Irishmen sold into slavery had women and children dependent
on them for support. The dependents were particularly vulnerable.
With their husbands and fathers sold into slavery, children were kidnapped by
slavers who took them to local prisons or to workhouses where they were charged
with “crimes” such as “vagrancy.” When mothers, grandparents or concerned
others discovered the children had been taken and tried to get them back, the
children’s captors and jailers demanded that food the children had eaten be paid
for and the war weary citizenry could seldom pay the ridiculous prices
charged. These children were sold into slavery and were brought to
America.

The average Irish slave ship carried 300 people, but
shipmasters might carry as many as 600. A Mr. Mittelberger witnessed 32
children thrown into the ocean during one voyage. A man by the name of
David Sellick was to supply New England with 250 women (females above 12 years
of age and under 45) and 300 men (over age 12 and no older than 45). Mr.
Sellick’s firm (one of many) was responsible for shipping over 6,400 girls and
boys. Only God knows how many Irish men, women and children Mr. Sellick
sent to the New World as slaves. (See The Irish Slaves by Rhetta
Akumatsu.)

Before black people ever heard of slavery, the Vikings
captured the Irish to serve as their slaves — from the 8th to the 12th century.

Being familiar with my Irish history, I get a bit tired of
hearing elected black officials talk about their history of victimhood because
their ancestors were brought to America as slaves. The sale of the Irish
as slaves in America ended at the same time the sale of African slave sales did
– though the signs in windows in from Boston to New York saying “Irish Need Not
Apply” for jobs lasted far longer.

“Hypocrite” is, I believe, the appropriate term for those
living on our East Coast who so like to portray themselves as too civilized to
participate in something as deplorable as owning a black slave (like
Southerners did). Buying Irishmen to be their slaves, however, was okay.

My Irish ancestors were still being rejected for jobs in the
North long after the War Between the States was over and many blacks in the
South were given land to farm. I do not suggest that this in any ways
justifies what was done to blacks sold into slavery. I do suggest that
history proves an effort of reparations was made to that group. None has
ever been made to the Irish people stolen from their homes by royal English
decree and given to human traffickers in England.

I have heard no apologies from New Englanders, New Yorkers,
Rhode Islanders and other East Coast residents who enslaved over 300,000 Irish
men, women and children. Yet I have seen no Irish people running to
Boston to tear down statues of early American founders whose roots were English
or who owned Irish slaves. I see no Irish people demanding restitution
for the misery their ancestors suffered because they were sold by the English
into slavery in America. I see no Irish last names of men elected to
Congress demanding advantage over other people because their ancestors were
sent to America as slaves.

“Well,” will say Representatives like John Lewis (D-GA) or
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), “Irish people are white. The children of Irish
slaves could integrate into the white-dominated society more easily.
Blacks will forever be identified as former slaves because of the color of
their skin.”

That’s a good excuse, but it’s not a reason. An excuse
and a reason are two totally different things.

People who use excuses rather than reasons to explain
themselves are usually lying – mostly to themselves… or, in the case of
politicians, to voters who need an excuse for the choices voters have made in
life.

If Blacks still identify themselves as offspring of former
slaves 150 years after slavery ended, they need to take a lesson from other
minorities. The Irish did the same thing the Italians, Hispanic, Asian,
Japanese, Chinese and all other immigrant Americans did: They created
their own communities, their own businesses which they supported, and as these
new businesses succeeded, their children moved into society on an equal
financial footing. Color had nothing to do with it.

Black people
have not supported their own communities.

There have been no slaves in America since 1870… that’s
almost 150 years. If you calculate 30 years as representative of a
generation, that’s five generations since any white, red, yellow, brown,
or black person was sold as a slave in America… at least if “slave” is
defined as one who is bought by one person and is sold to another.

In reality, those on welfare today are “bought and
sold.” I don’t care what color you are, without your monthly government
dole you would be on the street. People on Social Security (which is not
welfare… Social Security is money people paid into a retirement fund which was
stolen rather than invested by the United States Government) have been
(unlawfully) “bought and sold.” Politicians who run for office are bought
by those who contribute the largest amounts of money to their campaigns.

Perhaps someone will one day explain to all citizens –
black, white, red, brown, yellow – that when you tell society that to achieve
success in life – as a family, as a worker, as a business owner, as a student –
you need advantages unavailable to others, you will never consider yourself or
be considered by others as “equal.”

If you need an advantage over others to be equal to them,
you are admitting you do not consider yourself equal. That’s simple
logic. That is not to say blacks did not need civil rights legislation to
gain equal access to good schools and universities. They did. They
needed equal opportunity in the workplace. All minorities did. But
black leaders quickly turned equal rights needs into advantage over whites.

The truth is, all disadvantaged people have benefited by
the civil rights mostly fought for by Martin Luther King, black legislators and
community leaders. The truth is, once the law forced those who for one
reason or another did not want to grant education and employment equality to
blacks, other minorities, women, the disabled and others, all that was needed
was effort by those needing the protection and enforcement of the law.

Sure. There are a few thousand white supremacists in
America – former Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat of West Virginia, is a good
example. He was a lifelong member of the Ku Klux Klan until it became
politically disadvantageous for him. But a few thousand white
supremacists are not enough to make a dent in a national election for the
Presidency of this nation. Neither can a few thousand people withhold
access to being a successful, productive member of society from an entire race
of people who do what is necessary to help themselves.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? We call ourselves
Americans, not Irish-Americans. We do not separate ourselves from other
people by hyphenating our national origin. There are a lot of Irish
people whose ancestors were brought here as slaves but are now proud
Americans. They love this country. It doesn’t matter how they got
here.

In truth, the current “let’s tear down all of the historic
figures who owned slaves” is nothing more than an attempt to tear down
America’s history… to destroy us as a nation just like having open borders
removes our status as a nation. It is part of the plot to establish world
government.

You would think that black leaders of people who are killing
one another at record rates and whose out-of-marriage birth rate is 70% might
want to take a page out of the book of other people whose ancestors were
brought to America against their will but who succeeded, regardless. That
applies to white as well as minorities (whose out-of-wedlock birth rate is
lower than whites), but not to blacks.

That concept, however, does not fill the needs of black
politicians and community leaders and organizers who are leaders in the black
community. They are leading people, many of whom I dearly love, over a
cliff.

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).